Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Well,
after sixty-five years of a convoluted labyrinth path, the Palestinian people
finally reached the “almost” status of a nation. Thirty-five years ago
when I arrived in New York, I spent quite a bit of time with Hillel Kook,
better known in America as Peter Bergson. Peter Bergson had come to
the United States as a young man from what was then called British Palestine.
During WWII he was the head of the Irgun delegation in the USA. While
most Jewish lay leaders and rabbis hesitated and were not sure what steps to
take to save European Jews, Bergson conducted an aggressive campaign here in
America and to some degree succeeded convincing the FDR administration to take
some action to save Jews. For his efforts, leading Jews in this country
informed against him to the FBI: his FBI file is large, but thankfully he was
not deported.

After the
War, between 1946 and 1948 Bergson directed his attention to creating the
Israeli nation, which he called the Hebrew Nation. As an important means
of advertisement and propaganda in America, he used the slogan “It’s 1776 in
Palestine.” Most Americans understood clearly and related to what this signified,
and thus in 1947 the United States supported the creation of the Israeli
Nation.

It is a bit baffling now, after all
these years that the Palestinians have struggled to define themselves
politically, that the United States and Israel have found fault with that
effort of self-determination. Therefore, let us say it again today:
“It’s 1776 in Palestine, November 29, 2012.”